[Pmwiki-users] PmWikiOnBoa CookBook

[Carlo Strozzi]

Hi,
I think I had a major success in getting PmWiki to use REST-style (*)
URIs also in a CGI-based setup, with the Boa web server in my case.

(*) http://internet.conveyor.com/RESTwiki/moin.cgi

Here's how it can be done. Be warned that I have not tested it thoroughly
yet, but preliminary tests have proven to work well, so I'm confident.

PHP can be run on Boa only as a CGI program, not as embedded server code.
There are probably many ways to accomplish the same results, but here is
how I did it:

1) I use cgiwrap, so that pmwiki runs as whatever user-level account
   I like (let's say "goofy"), with much improved security I think.

2) Supposing your CGI scripts (including php4) are in /usr/lib/cgi-bin/ ,
   and that cgiwrap is configured to look for CGIs into ~goofy/cgi-bin/ ,
   here is a simple shell front-end to the whole movie :

$ cat ~goofy/cgi-bin/pmwiki.sh
#!/bin/sh
if [ -n "$PATH_INFO" ]			# turn into QUERY_STRING
then
   q="pagename=$(echo $PATH_INFO | sed 's,/,,;s,/,.,')"
   [ -n "$QUERY_STRING" ] && QUERY_STRING="$q&$QUERY_STRING"
   export QUERY_STRING
fi
export REDIRECT_STATUS=200		# needed to fool php4.
export PATH_INFO=/pmwiki.php
cd /home/goofy/cgi-bin/pmwiki		# set proper working directory.
exec /usr/lib/cgi-bin/php4 "$@"		# in case ISINDEX is allowed, dunno.
# EOF

For performance reasons my /bin/sh is a link to /bin/ash, but the
script will work just fine with any other bourne-workalike.

And here's how pmwiki is installed in ~goofy/cgi-bin/pmwiki/ :

$ ls -al ~goofy/cgi-bin/pmwiki/
drwxr-sr-x    6 goofy    goofy        4096 Jul 30 16:17 .
drwxr-sr-x    3 goofy    goofy        4096 Jul 28 14:41 ..
-rw-r--r--    1 goofy    goofy       18009 Feb  7  2002 COPYING
drwxr-sr-x    2 goofy    goofy        4096 Jul 29 10:12 local
-rw-r--r--    1 goofy    goofy       26660 Jul 28 14:46 php.ini
-rw-r--r--    1 goofy    goofy        1037 Mar  4 07:35 pmwiki-50.gif
-rw-r--r--    1 goofy    goofy       15421 Jul 24  2002 pmwiki-50.psd
-rw-r--r--    1 goofy    goofy       39641 Jul 30 19:33 pmwiki.php
drwxr-sr-x    2 goofy    goofy        4096 Jul 30 00:13 scripts
lrwxrwxrwx    1 goofy    goofy          48 Jul 28 14:43 uploads -> /home/goofy/public_html/pmwiki/uploads
drwxr-s---    2 goofy    goofy        4096 Jul 30 00:14 wiki.d
drwxr-sr-x    2 goofy    goofy        4096 Jul 24 00:27 wikilib.d


Note how the "uploads" directory points at an area that is accessible
to the web server for reading. And note also the "php.ini" file, that
needs to be configured according to your tastes/needs. I think the
most important setting in it is:

doc_root = /home/goofy/cgi-bin/pmwiki


It just looks complicated, but it isn't really all that much :-)
Given the above setup, your URL to enter PmWiki will be:

http://your.server/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/goofy/pmwiki.sh

So far, so good. But then php_sapi_name() in pmwiki.php will
detect that the calling interface is CGI, and use those ugly
QUERY_STRING settings to perform its job. But this is easy to
overcome: just set $EnablePathInfo=1; in your local.php and
path-based URIs will magically be used also with Boa (and
probably with other CGI-based setups).

Finally, pmwiki.php and upload.php should be modified to use both
"Location:" based redirections as well as html-based ones, as Partick
already knows. I attach my versions again, in case someone is going
to test the above.

comments will be most welcome.
Carlo

P.S.: Patrick, when/if you want me to turn this into a page on
      http://www.pmichaud.com/wiki/ just let me know

-- 
For best reading please set the Courier font.
Freedom for Business: http://swpat.ffii.org
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